Rant: my $90 'pro' thermal camera was a total waste until I did one thing

I bought this compact thermal imager for spotting overheating laptops and PSUs back in March, figured it would pay for itself in a month. It kept giving me wild readings, like 40 degrees off what my multimeter probe said, so I almost tossed it in a drawer. Then I found a forum tip about emissivity settings, turns out the default was aluminum but my surfaces were plastic and copper. Once I set it to 0.95 for those parts, it matched my probe within 3 degrees. That $90 device went from useless to my go-to for quick board checks, saved a server rebuild last Tuesday. Anyone else had a tool that needed a settings tweak before it actually worked for real repairs?

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wade55820d ago

Classic case of the tool being smarter than the user, right? I did the same thing with a cheap infrared thermometer. Pointed it at a dark heatsink and it read like 150 degrees when the thing was barely warm. Realized the "shiny metal" preset was on and my surface was basically matte black. Now I just pretend every reading is a mystery until I fiddle with the settings for five minutes.